The Watcher

Oft did a sentry, careworn and weary, gazeAt a curtained night;Stirred by a nameless dread, till the star-shell’s blaze In a splendour of light.Leaps in a dazzling curve through the empty sky,Shines as the pledge of a Watcher unseen on high,Shines as the promise of Life to the Brave that die; Till it sinks from sight.

Back fall the cumbrous folds of the purple dark; And the haunting fearRides in the voice of the wind ‘mid the corpses stark. Oh! the thought that thereLies the wreckage of men and of many a young life’s hope,By the fury of wanton Ambition strewn o’er the slopeWhere the dead by inches died, and the Wounded grope In a blind despair.

At long last comes a fugitive gleam, and the veil Of the night is rent,Pierced by the first glad shafts of the dawning pale; And the firmamentGlows with the hope of a heart that forgets its pain,As a bird’s voice climbs through the morn with a soft refrain,Climbs and falls like the surge of a wave on the main. And the fear of the night is spent.